The Korea Local Administration Review

South Korea has a pretty sound ex ante fiscal emergency management andregulations such as the mid-term financial planning, fiscal oversight system, andearly warning system but there is no ex post fiscal emergency system. This maycause a serious problem mitigating or preventing for recurrence timely if our localgovernments face a bankruptcy. Therefore we need to build an ex post fiscalemergency system in terms of preparing to the situation of severe fiscal distressor bankruptcy. This paper attempts to investigate what the fiscal emergencyconditions of US local governments have been occurred from the beginning of the20th century to the early of the 21st century. This shows what the main causeslead local governments’ bad fiscal situation with the historical context. Secondly, thispaper introduces an ex ante and ex post fiscal emergency system in America, mainlystates’ fiscal oversight system and federal bankruptcy code. Lastly, this paper triesto analyze network centralities among the main causes in 26 reports to explain whylocal governments face a fiscal emergency with micro level approach. In sum, thefiscal emergency situations of US local governments have been influenced by bothinternal and external factors such as population decline, bad investment, employees’salaries and benefits, lawsuits, war, great depression, etc. And they have tried tobuild diverse fiscal emergency systems to manage or mitigate the circumstances.This indicates that we also need to build an ex post fiscal emergency system tomitigate the situation and prevent recurrence in our future.
□ Keywords: Causes of Local Fiscal Emergency, Causes of Local Debt, Ex AnteFiscal Emergency System, Ex Post Fiscal Emergency System,Bankruptcy Code